


The Cry of the Lark

by Piscaria



Category: No. 6 (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Bittersweet, Crossdressing, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:27:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piscaria/pseuds/Piscaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Nezumi's dresser doesn't show up to work, Shion lends a helping hand at the theatre.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cry of the Lark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [junko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Junko! Thank you for giving me a good excuse to play with these characters. I'd almost forgotten how much I love them!

“Tighter, dammit!!” Nezumi grunted, and Shion tugged at the corset strings, his gentle hands a marked contrast to the brusque efficiency of Nezumi’s usual dresser. It felt strange to be pleading for less, not more, gentleness in the cramped backstage corner that served as his dressing room, stranger still to glimpse Shion’s shock of white hair in the mirror amidst the costumes and props. Nezumi’s two worlds were colliding backstage, and he wasn’t at all sure he liked it. 

But his usual dresser hadn’t come to the theater yesterday. She might have found a better job, or she might have been murdered, for all Nezumi knew or cared. He needed a dresser, though, and Shion had been all-too-eager to volunteer for the job when Nezumi came home complaining after the show last night. 

“The last thing I need is you following me around like a puppy backstage,” Nezumi had griped, but he’d known, even then, it was inevitable. At such short notice, where else could he find someone who’d put up with him for a dresser’s wages?

Now, he watched in the mirror as his already-slender waist finally yielded to the corset strings, curving in an extra inch to better create the illusion of hips beneath the flared skirts of his petticoat, just as the slightly padded chest of the corset hinted at the existence of breasts. From behind, Shion’s hands settled on Nezumi’s waist, clearly trying to span it. His hands looked huge against the delicate, steel-boned corset, for all that Nezumi knew they were the same size as his own. 

“Doesn’t it hurt?” 

“It’s fine!” Nezumi snapped, sharper than he intended. “Bring me the dress!” 

Shion hurried to obey, carefully lifting the embroidered gown from the hook where the costume manager had hung it a few moments ago. Like a child, Nezumi raised his arms above his head, closing his eyes as the voluminous skirt engulfed him. After all of the coaxing it had taken to get his corset tight enough, Nezumi didn’t have high hopes for Shion’s handling of the dress itself. But to his surprise, Shion’s fingers caught his own, guiding them unerringly through the sleeves. Shion crossed behind to zip him up without being prompted. Nezumi might have teased him about knowing his way around women’s clothing if he hadn’t heard for himself Shion’s flustered reaction to Safu’s proposition. No, this was simply Shion being Shion, surprisingly clever in some ways, for all that he was such an idiot in others.

He didn’t trust Shion with his stage make-up, though, despite his success with the dress. Shion hovered behind him, watching curiously as Nezumi dipped the brush into the pot of red paint, carefully tracing the bow of his lips. A splash of rouge across his cheekbones and a shadow of kohl around his eyes, and Eve stared back at him from the mirror. She was, perhaps, a shade less pretty than when his old dresser yielded the make-up brush, but under the stage lights, who could tell? 

“This will have to work,” Nezumi said, voice unconsciously falling into Eve’s higher pitch. The skirts twirled around his ankles as Eve rose gracefully from the make-up chair. Shion took a step back to give him space, eyes wide.

“You’re beautiful,” he breathed. 

Nezumi would have mocked him. Eve blushed. 

For the first time, Nezumi wondered if he’d made a spectacular mistake by bringing Shion here. It wasn’t like he was a stranger to adoration. Fools never stopped looking for the perfect love all the fairy tales had promised them, and Eve’s voice and graceful gestures never failed to ensnare at least a few. Eve cultivated dozens of fans who approached her, red-cheeked and stammering, after the shows, often bearing gifts of flowers, chocolates, and — Nezumi’s favorite — jewelry, easily sold. The trick was to entice them with Eve’s sweetness, while never letting them close enough to glimpse the abrasive reality beneath. The few fans, like Rikiga, who’d met Nezumi as well as Eve tended not to stay devoted for long. But Shion hadn’t been seduced by a pretty illusion. Shion was, in fact, gazing at Eve with the same naked devotion with which he sometimes looked at Nezumi . . . but in a dress, hair falling around his shoulders, Nezumi had trouble reaching for his usual, derisive response. 

“Curtain!” the stage manager called, and Nezumi hurried to take his place.

* * *

Normally, Eve played opposite older men, but this director had decided on an entirely gender-bent production, no doubt hoping the novelty might attract some new faces to the audience. Nezumi had been dubious up until he met their Romeo, a swaggering, husky-voiced woman called Orochi on stage, who made up in confidence everything she lacked in height. Orochi’s Romeo set to wooing so passionately that Nezumi’s breathlessness wasn’t entirely feigned when Juliet pulled away from their kiss at the window. 

“Come death, and welcome!” Romeo crowed, drawing a laugh from the audience. “Juliet wills it so! How is't, my soul? Let's talk; it is not day.”

“It is, it is!” Juliet sighed, dipping in for one last kiss before taking her Romeo by the shoulders and turning him reluctantly towards the window. The movement faced her briefly towards the wings, where Shion’s hair glowed pale in the shadows where he waited to help with the next costume change. “It is the lark that sings so out of tune, straining harsh discords and unpleasant sharps,” Juliet murmured sadly, away from Romeo as though letting her gaze be drawn by something out the window. Shion’s wistful eyes caught Nezumi’s, and Juliet spoke her next lines directly to him. “Some say the lark makes sweet division; This doth not so, for she divideth us . . .” 

Even as Juliet turned back to Romeo, letting herself be drawn back in for yet another parting kiss, Nezumi could feel the heat of Shion's gaze.

* * *

After the play, Shion cradled Juliet’s bloody gown like a bride as he carried it to the sink. Through much trial and error (and, rumor had it, at least one enormous bribe to a chemist in No. 6), the costume master had developed a fake blood formula that didn’t stain the costume, so long as it was washed out immediately. 

“That was so romantic!” Shion sighed. 

“That was infatuation,” Nezumi corrected, working on his corset laces, which Shion had helpfully loosened for him. He normally wasn’t so quick to change after a play, preferring to meet any fans as Eve rather than himself, but today he found himself eager to get back into his own clothes. He knew how to handle Shion’s infatuation as himself. It was harder as Eve. 

“You don’t think they really loved each other?” 

“They were young and impulsive,” Nezumi said. “They’d only just met. How could they?”

Shion glanced up from the sink of bloody water. “You don’t believe in love at first sight?”

“No such thing.”

“Of course there is!” For a moment, Shion’s expression looked as raw as his hands, stained to the wrist with red. “I think I loved you from the moment you climbed inside my window back in Chronos.” 

Nezumi let himself pretend the breath he took was for the sudden loss of constriction around his ribs as the corset came free, not for the memory of Shion’s warm hands stitching him back together. “That’s because you’re an idiot.” 

“But is he an idiot who can clean a dress?”the costume manager asked, coming up to stand behind Shion, who jumped, as if only just remembering that the backstage area swarmed with actors and stagehands. 

The costume manager scowled as he inspected Shion’s work. The glittering silks and dusty velvets the actors wore onstage were worth more than an actor made in a month, and even fake jewels could get pawned for a enough coin to buy a hot meal. No theatre became successful without keeping a close eye on its costumes and props. But the costume master had nothing to complain about — Shion had scrubbed the dress as carefully as he washed any of Inukasha’s dogs. 

“Hmmph,” the costume manager grumbled, as close to praise as he ever got. He took the dress, still dripping, from Shion, then snapped his fingers impatiently at Nezumi.

Stepping out of the petticoat, Nezumi handed it and the to the costume master with a grin. In his underwear, he crossed to his locker, earning a whistle from Orochi, who stroked her codpiece suggestively.

“Why haven’t you ever climbed in my window, Nezumi? You know I like a sausage as well as a peach!” 

“When’s the last time you even tasted a peach?” Nezumi shot back. “Fruit that fine doesn’t grow outside the wall. You’d need a No. 6 orchard for that.” 

“Or I could just have a taste of your boy, there!” Orochi laughed, leering at Shion. She’d unfastened her binder, and Shion blushed red at the sight of her bare breasts falling free. He hurried to look away, and Nezumi laughed, throwing an arm around Shion’s shoulders and drawing him to his side. 

“He’s too fine for the likes of you.” 

“Eve!” the stage master called. “You’ve got an admirer!” 

Quickly, Nezumi shrugged a dressing gown over himself. With his make-up on and his hair falling around his face, he still looked enough like Eve to meet a fan. He was all coy smiles when he crossed the room to meet a stammering, paunchy man old enough to be his father. 

“A beautiful performance,” the man sighed, handing Nezumi a blooming rose as Shion watched curiously. “Truly incredible! You are one of the lights that make this hellhole bearable!” 

“Thank you,” Nezumi said in Eve’s voice, taking up the rose and batting his eyelashes at the old man. “Truly, it makes me so glad to know you liked the performance!”

They went on like that for a few more moments before the old man left. 

“It’s like you were a different person!” Shion exclaimed, as soon as he was out of hearing range. 

“That’s because Eve’s tolerable,” Orochi muttered. 

Nezumi flipped her off before stepping into his trousers. 

* * *

That night, Nezumi gasped awake, the phantom scent of smoke and burning flesh still acrid in his nostrils. The scars on his back throbbed suddenly with the memory of flames a decade old. Beside him, Shionn stirred, hand blindly patting across the mattress to curl around Nezumi’s wrist. 

“Nezumi?” he mumbled, voice thick with sleep. 

“It’s nothing. Just a bad dream.” In the stillness of the night, Nezumi allowed himself to stroke Shion’s hair, pale and soft as spiderwebs. “Go back to sleep.” 

Shion nodded against the pillow, already starting to snore. His hand still curled, warm and sweet, around Nezumi’s wrist. Still trying to calm his heartbeat, Nezumi moved his own hand so it rested against Shion’s palm to palm, fingers tangling together. As always, he marveled at the softness of Shion’s hand. Even working as a park ranger, Shion had never developed real calluses, not with robots to do all the dirty work for him. Shion was like everything else from No. 6. Soft. Spoiled. Selfish. Why else would he have spoken so frankly at the theatre, not knowing or caring what his words did to Nezumi? 

Not for the first time, he wondered if Shion was merely another tendril of No. 6’s cruelty, sent to slip inside his defenses and wound him where he was most vulnerable. Not consciously, of course — Shion was too painfully earnest to carry out any obvious deceit. But he was weakening Nezumi. The nightmare alone was proof of that. Only a few weeks ago, Nezumi had urged Shion to cast away the memories of his mother and his old life. Now, here he was, dreaming of his own past for the first time in weeks. His heart, brutally cauterized so many years ago, was learning to bleed again. 

_“No. 6 weakens you,”_ his old mentor had told him once. _”You have defined yourself by your hatred over it, and so you have given it power over you. That will be your undoing.”_ He had urged Nezumi to make the arduous journey to one of the other cities, to slip free of the hold No. 6 held on his heart. _Release the chains of hatred that bind you. Be free._ Instead, here Nezumi was living in the shadows of its walls, curled up against one of its former citizens, like a dog worrying a poisoned bone.

“My one love sprung from my only hate,” he murmured aloud, wistful from his nightmare and the late hour. Beside him, Shion made a sleepy noise of confusion, breath gusting hot across Nezumi’s exposed throat. “Shhh. It’s nothing,” Nezumi whispered, stroking the back of his hand. 

Sighing happily, Shion rolled closer to him, bolder asleep than awake. He threw an arm across Nezumi’s chest, pressing his face to his shoulder. For a moment, Nezumi allowed himself to return the embrace, breathing in the familiar scent of Shion’s body.

It would be easy, so easy, Nezumi thought, to capture those pliant lips with his own, kiss Shion awake, slip his hand into his underwear, and finally give them both what they wanted. Perhaps Shion’s gasps and moans might even drown out the roar of the flames that had followed him out of his dreams, at least for awhile. 

And really, it was ridiculous that he’d waited so long. Shion wasn’t the first to gaze at Nezumi with want in his eyes, not by a long shot. Nezumi had tumbled any number of lovers, male and female, to this bed, though he’d never let any of them fall asleep beside him the way Shion did every night, never woken to find them making breakfast, smiling shyly at him over a pot of steaming rice. Maybe he just needed to get Shion out of his system. Nezumi carded his fingers through that spidersilk hair and imagined Shion blinking awake beneath his kiss, sleepiness and disorientation quickly dissolving in the face of the want they’d both denied for too long. He imagined the sounds Shion would make, imagined those slender thighs falling open, making room for Nezhumi between them. And then he sighed, slipping out of Shion’s warm grip.

In his underwear, he padded outside. The frigid winter air raised goose pimples on his flesh. He felt the cold seeping up through the soles of his bare feet. Closing his eyes, Nezumi welcomed the chill. His world had ended in fire once, so many years ago. The second time, he’d vowed, it would end in ice, in pure, sharp hatred. Breathing in deep, he let the cold numb him.

He didn’t know how long he stood there before the door opened behind him. Shion padded outside, hair tousled from sleep, eyes dark with concern. 

“Nezumi? What are you doing out here?” Shion’s frown deepened at Nezumi’s shrug, and he stepped up to take him by the shoulder, flinching at the coldness of his skin. “You’re freezing!” 

“I couldn’t sleep,” Nezumi said. 

Shion tugged at his elbow. “Well, come back to bed. Maybe you can now.”

Nezumi only hesitated a moment before letting Shion guide him back to bed. He might as well enjoy winter's sweetness while it lasted. Soon enough would come spring, and the cry of the lark.

The End


End file.
